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Topic: Learning to make your own distro (Read 2364 times)

First of all, I recently found Peppermint OS, and I am very impressed with this distro. I installed this on both of my daughter's computers, and Peppermint 8 32-bit is alot faster than Linux Mint 18 XFCE 32-bit. Even on a 12 year old laptop with a single core AMD and 1.5 gig of RAM. Most of all, the compinations of using the XFCE menu/components on top of lx-session is genius, along with having mint-update and a similar software center which I think is far and above the GNOME software option.

Now to the question: I have become interested in wanting to make my own distro, but I can confidently say I don't have the knowledge/experience to do so. I do see alot of "point and click" options similar to Remastersys where you can make a respin based on another distro, but, in my opinion, be irresponsible to put something out and not know how to properly maintain it. What knowledge/experience is helpful to start down that path? Any info or suggestions would be appreciated.

I have two systems at the moment. One running Peppermint and one running Void, minimal install with everything else added manually from the console.Be warned, not even Xorg will be installed by default and almost all the services will need to be installed and started by yourself. You will need to create almost everything yourself, including setting up an user, configuring the wifi, picking all the components like file-manager, window-manager, etc...I've done this a few times with Void now and I know exactly what I need, so the whole process takes me 2 -3 hours, but the first time it took me one week, working on it in my spare time.

Downside? Quite a lot of work the first time you do it. NOTE: Take notes and keep them for future reference!Upside? You learn a lot, get your system exactly how you want it and with the pieces of software you want.

Thanks for the info. My interest would be Debian/Ubuntu side of Linux. Also want to learn programming and how to create in Linux like Peppermint made ICE and their control center. The LFS may help me with learning the "bones" of Linux. BTW I will check out Void as well

Also if you're going to distribute the distro beyond family and friends, make SURE you remove all branding from the donor distro first .. it would be unfair, not too mention a breach of trademark law to distribute another distros trademarked artwork/branding without explicit written consent.

So feel free to use Ubuntu/Mint/Peppermint/<insert other distro> as a base, it's pretty much all open source and permissively licenced .. but be aware that does not extend to branding (and in our case the copyrighted Ray Bilcliff wallpapers, which you'd need to get his permission to distribute).

In fact the biggest job in creating a distro is staying on the right side of copyright/trademark/licensing .. there's a LOT of different licences involved for different components.

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I wanted to base it on Debian, but Ubuntu is just more familiar to me. I also discovered a program for Linux called Firework. It is the closest thing I could find that mimics the old Chrome App Launcher.

I wanted to base it on Debian, but Ubuntu is just more familiar to me. I also discovered a program for Linux called Firework. It is the closest thing I could find that mimics the old Chrome App Launcher.

Personally I think Ubuntu is a much better idea, I love Debian but it's a much harder base to make smooth for the desktop .. it can be done, take MX for example, but it's more work and generally requires you host a lot of custom packages yourself.

Might take a look at Firework myself.

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